Cabin in the Woods
by KRSONMar
Summary: Taking shelter from a thunderstorm, Gordon and Alyx find themselves stuck in a conveniently-located cabin. Gordon knows what's supposed to happen...and he can't afford to let it.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N-I said I'd get this published by the end of the year-note that it is five minutes to 11:00pm in my time zone.:-P**

**This story will be my first where I'll do chapters one at a time; here's the first one. Not beta-ed and probably not as proofread as I'll want it to be, but I'm rushing against this deadline I set for myself, so I might edit the ending of this chapter to transition more smoothly later. Special thanks go to the friends in the fandom I've made this past year, epsecially deyanire on DeviantArt! This one's got your name on it for having to listen to me whine about not writing, haha!;-D**

**Now, if you're reading this when it's published...it's New Year's Eve/Day, why are you reading fanfiction? Go have fun, I'm the sad person who publishes fanfic instead of celebrating, not you. If it's not New Year's Eve or Day...go read the fic. And then get on my case to publish the other chapters.**

"_I wish I had an angel for one moment of love_

_I wish I had your angel tonight."_

—_Wish I Had An Angel, Nightwish_

"Dammit", Alyx hissed. The rain wasn't letting up. In fact, it was getting worse. The light but steady drops that had been falling consistently for the past ten minutes were starting to turn into heavy, wet drops, and now that they stopped for breath and to assess what to do, they could hear a low, rolling thunder. Gordon sighed too. Thunder was not good, in any respect. Thunder meant lightning, and that meant the storm could get dangerous to be out in. With all these tall trees around...

They had been trekking farther from the base than they usually did, on a trip to check out a possible abandoned CP outpost. It might yield supplies, it might yield information...it might be still occupied by a few stragglers holing up. The higher-ups at the base had decided that, with other scouting units either already occupied or decommissioned for the moment due to injuries, Gordon and Alyx could handle whatever might be there by themselves. Gordon personally thought the entire Resistance had too high an opinion of the realism of the reputation the famous Freeman-Vance duo were getting for being able to handle so much as a team, and would have liked having some more backup in case things did get messy...but he did have to admit, other Rebels tended to grind his nerves a little, with their fawning and chattering and...quite frankly, unfamiliarity. You had to make small talk with people who watched you as if expecting every other sentence to be some profound edict, or else have the whole vibe of things thrown off by the new people, the new opinions and styles of interacting, to deal with.

And he liked working with just Alyx. Their fighting chemistry was flawless and effective, and he enjoyed her company. She was fun and funny and knew how to handle him and when to do so, as opposed to telling him to snap out of himself. She had proven to be a very good friend to have, and he wished he'd met her sooner.

Although that word, "friend", always felt ill-fitting and hard to say out loud or even think. It was like when you went to a new acquaintance's house and tried a new dish, and it got stuck in your throat and you had to gulp it down and blink away the water rising in your eyes, then smile and say it was delicious, because that was what they were offering. Good enough, but not quite right. Not what you wanted.

He forced himself not to think the word too often, because it forced him to think about whether it was the right word. And he didn't want to think that. He had not to think about that, because there were no other options. It didn't matter if he thought of her as more than that, or even if they both thought it of each other, because they couldn't have it. Just some bland, unexciting dish that was okay until some hunk of unidentifiable vegetable you'd never heard of tried to choke you. That was all they got.

Alyx wiped some loose strands of hair that had escaped her headband from her eyes, where they were dripping rainwater, and let out a breath of frustration—"pfffff"—through her pursed lips. Gordon was not going to think about how attractive it made her look, the wet hair, the frown, the determined look on her face...

"Is there anywhere nearby we can hole up? A cave or something? How far are we from the outpost?"

"Well..." she said, pulling the GPS tracker out of a loop in her belt. She turned it on...gave it a few flicks with her finger to get the always-in-need-of-repair machinery working right... "Are you..? For the love of Godel, we've gotten off track! We're about five miles away from the path we're supposed to be taking, in the wrong direction!"

"What...?" She leaned in to show him the readout. "Dammit," he echoed, and then sighed, slumping. This kind of thing always happened to him. Gordon Luck, he was starting to call it. You found a locked door blocking your path, so you took a more circuitous route, only to end up right back on the other side of that same door...the door you needed to get through had an electric lock and the power was out, so Alyx sent you to turn it back on, and you met up with half a dozen headcrab zombies and two dozen headcrabs along the way...Gordon Luck.

"Well..." Alyx added, "there does seem to be something nearby, a little shed or supply shack we can hole up in. It's about half a mile..." she looked up and around "…that way. Wanna try for it?" Gordon was about to ask if there was anything else more sturdy than a shack nearby, but then a peal of thunder, real thunder, not just a steady rumble, crackled somewhere miles over their heads. They looked at each other, defeated.

"I guess we don't have too much of a choice," he said. "Should we try to run for it? It might be about to come down hard." He was carrying most of the heavy equipment on his back—the small army's worth of ammo he always travelled with, including an RPG launcher, shotgun and crossbow, plus several boxes of rounds for Alyx's Magnum—she travelled comparitively light—but she had the camping supplies on her back—the backpack stuffed full with a tent that would be useless in this weather, several cans of food and a heating implement to cook it with, and the portable communications system equipment they had with them.

Alyx looked skyward, wiping more wet hair out of her eyes. "Yeah, I guess we better try." As if to confirm they had made the right decision, the thunder crackled again, this time more sharply. They looked at each other—"yup"—and then took off at a steady pace in the direction Alyx had indicated.

The terrain they'd been travelling over and through was all hilly forests, leading up to the mountains surrounding them. It was beautiful when you stopped to look around at it—but right now, the rocky soil and the ground covered in pine needles were hard to navigate, made slippery and muddy by the rain. Gordon had never been in a deciduous forest in a storm like this—he now realized he'd never been in any forest in a storm, although for some reason rain in forests made him think of...well, rainforests—and hadn't realized that the water would start to stream down the small drops and crests in the land in rivulets, making paths in the dirt and blanket of pine needles and causing him to wonder if it could flood. The water all seemed to be running in a general downhill direction roughly perpendicular to the direction they were taking, so there had to be some kind of river or something it was all collecting in. He made a mental note of the direction in case they needed to find a source of water later.

The trees they were under now provided some cover, although little, and the sound of the water on the leaves and needles was novel to him, breathtaking in how loud it was—somehow you never thought of that, not being exposed to nature very much. They were running alongside each other now, keeping at perfect pace of each other, and Gordon could hear Alyx's steady breathing—"huff...huff...huff"—beside him. She was a far better runner than he was, having needed to rely on the skill to survive for so long. He was learning, though, his out-of-shape, soft and sheltered 20th-century body adapting to his new reality of this bizarre and unexpected 21st. Their running, the perfect evenness they were keeping with each other, the in-and-out of breathing, the synchronized swing of legs, made him think of wolves running in a pack—or in this case, perhaps, a duo. He almost couldn't help grinning, and fought it back, doubling his focus on navigating the uneven ground. Over their heads, a bird of some sort cawed noisily as it darted from one tree to another, taking shelter or else startled by them.

A small clearing was up ahead now—"That's it!" Alyx called between breaths—and they made a last effort to reach it. They broke into the clearing, made a last dash—and collapsed against the outer wall of the structure, part of the roof cropping out to give them cover from the rain. They leaned against it and gasped for breath, taking a few moments...and then both started, simultaneously, laughing a little, although for no apparent reason. Alyx met his eye and said, between breaths, "I have to admit...that was kind of fun..."

"The trees..." he started, about to agree, but he was more out of breath than her and coughed a little, resting his hands on his knees. He sufficed for smiling up at her, a few breaths of silent laughter escaping him, and she smiled broadly and leaned her head back, resting. She looked beautiful...but he wasn't going to think that. Instead he looked at what the structure they would be using for shelter was and...

Oh. It wasn't a shack or a shed. It was a cabin. A full-blown, fairly well-made, not-in-too-bad-shape-by-the-looks-of-the-outside-of-it-at-least, cabin. Small, nothing fancy, but not totally rustic, grey wood walls made darker by the rain, a sturdy-looking roof and what appeared to be a chimney and the remnants of a porch that was breaking up. Small, but bigger than a trailer, probably the kind of thing someone had lived in, a family perhaps, in the years immediately prior to the Combine.

"Hey...this isn't bad!" Alyx opined brightly, pleasantly surprised at their good fortune. She walked to the door and looked it up and down. "Looks safe enough...what do you think, wanna check it out inside?"

Gordon hesitated. No, he didn't, honestly. This cabin was making him nervous, somehow. A shed or a shack seemed safe, uncomfortable and unpleasant and just rudimentary, and...why was he thinking this? This made no sense.

"Sure," he said, although he said it slowly and unholstered his pistol and crowbar to have handy in case they weren't the only ones taking shelter in the cabin. The thing was surely bound to be infested with headcrabs, or the headcrab-zombified remnants of it's former occupants...right?

Alyx chuckled. "Good idea." She unholstered her gun and held it out in front of her. "Ready?" she asked. On his nod, she kicked the door open and entered the doorway gun-first in a practiced move. Nothing jumped out, nothing screeched or howled and came running at them...

"Gordon, can you shine your light in there for me?" Alyx asked, not taking her eyes off the dark inside of the cabin. He obliged, leaning in wordlessly and pressing the button on his suit to activate his flashlight. He scanned the floor first with the ray of light—headcrabs were his primary concern, followed by headcrab zombies—but nothing seemed to be stirring. Alyx put a foot forward carefully, cautiously testing the wooden boards of the floor for weakness before she continued into the building. She looked to the left of the space and he wordlessly knew to swing his light where she was looking. A fireplace of some sort, actually intact, was against the left wall, and there was a pile of wood—they'd have to see if it was any good—next to it. Well _that _was a stroke of luck.

Alyx moved farther into the room, still testing the floorboards; they creaked every now and then, but held. Gordon realized maybe he should be a gentleman and offer to be the one that would fall through the floor if it wasn't stable.

"Want me to go first?"

Alyx tested another floorboard with her foot. "I got it."

"You sure?"

"No offense, Gordon...but you tend to fall through rotting floors. I know how to test them. "She gave him her gentle, teasing smile. He had to admit, floors did occasionally provide unexpected challenges to him. Apparently Alyx had a skill he didn't in knowing how to test for rotting floorboards. He now carefully watched her to see her method so he could apply it himself.

"Gordon, swing your light into that corner?" He obeyed, angling his torso to survey the corner of the room. There was a wall there, dividing the cabin in half. It ran half the width of the cabin, so it was more of a room partition than a wall, but there was another half of the building back there that was unilluminated by his flashlight. Which was running low now, come to think of it...

"Um, Alyx?"

"Oh, your light's dimming, isn't it?" she asked. She cast her eyes around the illuminated part of the room and they fell upon...an old-fashioned lantern sitting on a chest against the wall. She snatched it up, inspected it...pulled out her gun and pulled back the loading mechanism and, in a move he'd seen her use before, pulled the trigger on the gun, angling the weapon so the loading chamber was near the opening of the lantern. Apparently there was fuel of some sort in the lantern, because it caught and lit up the room with a soft, golden glow just as Gordon's flashlight clicked off.

"Nice!" he said softly in admiration, pushing up his glasses, which had fallen down his nose. She grinned and held the lantern high to see around the half of the cabin they were in.

A space about fifteen paces across by fifteen wide. A simple wooden table against the wall, big enough to seat maybe four, with two chairs, one pushed against it and the other knocked over a few feet away. The fireplace and the pile of wood. A sofa and an old television with an antenna—interesting to see those in a log cabin, although the TV looked like it no longer worked. In the far left corner sat a wood-burning stove, the makeshift kitchen of the previous inhabitants. A chest against the wall the door was in, from which Alyx had grabbed the lantern. A set of drawers against the wall partition. He couldn't see what was beyond the partition, though.

"This isn't bad!" Alyx enthused, setting about inspecting things closer. She started shifting through the set of drawers, coming up with cooking utensils and various hunting tools. She started chatting away about what they might find that could be of use, and Gordon started to feel like maybe his nervousness had been misplaced after all. Nothing was jumping out at them, nothing was breaking under their feet or around them...maybe they'd finally actually caught a break?

He wandered over to the other side of the partition. His light should be charged now, so he flicked it on.

There. Messy and unmade, as if the previous owners had leapt out of it to escape. A blue-and-white woven wool blanket on top, white linens underneath. Queen-size.

Two pillows.

An actual roll of thunder sounded just then, as if to validate the pit forming in Gordon's stomach. He had grown up with television serials, cheesy movies and soap operas. He knew what cabins in the woods were for. You had a man and a woman who had been dancing around each other for too long, they somehow got caught in the rain and had to hole up in some conveniently-located cabin like this one, words were exchanged, maybe a verbal spat broke out that nevertheless led to...

His mouth felt dry. That was why, he realized, he had been nervous about this cabin. It was too cozy and dry, too conveniently sheltering from the storm, too just-the-two-of-them, too...

"What's back there, Gordon, everything okay?" Alyx came up behind him, gun at the ready. And there was no sound, nothing between the two of them but the _shhhh_ of the rain falling around the cabin as they stared at the one bed in the building. The silence was prolonged. Gordon scrambled in his head for something to say, because the silence between them was too still, too uncomfortable, too loud, for two people who meant nothing but platonic friendship to each other.

Alyx was the first to break the silence, as she always was. "Is this a chest of clothes?" she wondered a little loudly, crossing to the wall where another set of drawers sat that Gordon hadn't noticed, he'd been panicking so hard at the sight of the bed. Alyx rifled through the drawers and came up with...

"Awesome!" she cried, pulling out an old T-shirt. "Listen...why don't you go and make a fire in the other room, and I'll change, okay? I don't know about you, but I'm getting cold."

"You're, you're going to...? Oh, um...yeah, sure..." Of course she'd want to change her clothes, she wasn't wearing an HEV suit and her clothing was dripping wet. The rain had given him a badly-needed drenching and washed most of the blood and guts off his suit, but she had to be uncomfortable. He darted into the next room to get the fire going.

As he sat in front of the fireplace, fumbling with the logs and digging through Alyx's pack for the firestarter kit she usually carried, he found it worryingly difficult to keep focused on what he was supposed to be doing. _Stack a log, stack another, no don't lay it across the first one like that, it'll fall...stack another, careful, don't drop it, stack one more...here's some paper to use as kindling...oh right, the firestarter...no, strike it _away_ from you, Gordon, don't set the cabin on fire..._

He was hyper-aware, the whole time, of the noise of her bustling around in the next room. He would _not_ turn around, but...was she planning to...

To do what, exactly? Anything? He kept waiting to suddenly feel her hands sliding down his shoulders from behind, her arms snaking around him seductively as she would pull him close and breathe into his ear some pick-up line...

"Ow, dammit!" she hissed in the other room.

"You okay?" he asked reflexively, snapping his head toward the partition in automatic concern.

"Yeah, stepped on a...what is this...it's like a wood chipping or something. Don't worry, it just surprised me."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm good, uh...don't come back here, I'm still...changing..."

He turned back to the fire, gulping, his face red and too warm for the tiny flame he had going. He focused on getting it to ignite the logs. He knew the routine he had set up with himself by now: when he started thinking about something happening between him and Alyx, he imagined himself as blank, unemotive, like a flat, shiny sheet of steel with no imperfections, or envisioned a wall coming down between them. It was always a big, concrete wall, made of blocks of mortar wider across than he was and stacked on top of each other about two or three across. But now he imagined it had electrified wire strung across it—that should kill the fluttering in his stomach.

"Okay," Alyx sighed, coming up behind him. Gordon snapped around reflexively before she could wrap her arms around his neck and...that was ridiculous and more hopeful than fearful, but she didn't have to know what he was thinking. Hopefully it didn't show on his face, though.

"You okay?" She cocked an eyebrow at his sudden movement. He was coming to love it when she did that. She was standing there in a loose graying white T-shirt and what looked like they had once been work pants of somebody's, some rough, basic brown fabric that hung on her loosely. She had put her headband back on after she'd dressed and still had the bandages and rappelling gloves on she always wore. Basically, it was a just-out-of-bed T-shirt and sweatpants look. Nothing at all glamorous or conventionally attractive about it. So why was he having to envision the wall and the plate of steel again? Maybe it was the intimacy suggested by her willingness to let him see her like that. Or something. Who the heck knew. He was just trying desperately not to show on his face any sign of...anything, never mind not letting her see him trying to take her in in all of her frumpy-pajama-ed glory.

"Fine," he said, in a way that sounded satisfactorily convincing to him. "So there were some clothes back there?"

"Yeah! There looks like there might be some stuff in the drawers for you too, but I don't know if they'll fit. You know, in case you feel like getting out of the suit."

She was crossing over to her pack as she said this and not looking at him, totally nonchalant, so he was unsure whether to read anything into that or if he was just being paranoid.

Cut it out, Gordon, stop thinking like this! The wall's electric wire took on a nice visual crackle in his mind's eye to get the point across to himself.

"I don't know, I uh...you know I tend to feel safer in the suit. In case we have to run or anything."

She smirked teasingly, "Yeah, I know. I gotta get the comm system set up, they'll want to hear back from us at the base."

"Oh, right...good thinking." Indeed, she had the equipment all taken out of her pack and was now hooking things together in preparation to fire the machinery up.

The portable transmitter was about the size of two thick reference books on top of each other-Gordon was thinking of the kind of textbooks and reference guides he'd used at MIT—and covered with knobs and switches with a retractable antenna sticking up. An actual antenna. It didn't look like something Gordon expected from The Future, it looked more like what he imagined a Ham radio to look like—maybe it was? Whatever it was, it was a smaller and quicker way to communicate than the videoscreens they had to hack into from Combine outposts. He'd once asked why something smaller, like some modification of cell phone technology, wasn't more practical, and Alyx had said that the way this device used the radio wave spectrum was harder for the Combine to detect—and besides, cell phone towers and sattellites had been one of the first things the Combine had fried from orbit when they'd arrived.

Alyx was hooking up a microphone with a push-to-talk button, the power sources, and a small speaker that clipped to the side of the transmitter. Her hands worked quickly and with practiced ease, the way he might throw on a coffee-maker when preparing himself for heading to a lecture with some friends after work. Alyx set this device up with the careless precision of someone who had used the technology for years. He loved watching her work with machines. Her hands were capable and she was sure of herself. He'd watched her take a look for just a few seconds at the engines of Combine troop transport vehicles, reach in and tweak a few wires, and get the thing running so they could steer it themselves instead of Overwatch.

It was sexy.

But he wasn't going to think that right now.

He focused instead on digging around for some cans of food in Alyx's bag. He came up with a can of beans and another of green beans and corn. He pulled the little heating element out of it's safety case—just a glorified car ciggarette lighter, basically—and put the can of beans on first, then went rooting around in the bag for a can opener.

"Do you want...green beans and corn, or the…regular beans, I guess?"

"Want kind?"

"Umm...kidney, by the looks of it?"

"Gimme the corn." He switched the cans.

Then realized the unconscious instinct he'd just followed...and decided he could dismiss it to himself as just basic consideration, nothing more. He carefully ignored the little voice in his head that was scoffing at him, "You rotten liar!"

Well, that was it...he was "making dinner". He turned to Alyx, plugging in a last cable that connected the microphone to the transceiver.

"Ready to go?" she checked with him.

He nodded one of his wordless replies, and she turned back to the machine and dialed in the coordinates or the access code or the not-phone-number or whatever it was that made the thing connect to who they wanted it to go to. He should probably learn how all this technology worked—besides really needing to know, he also felt like one of those uncool old people who watched "the young kids with their techno-whatsits" without understanding what was going on. It was a smudge on his normally faultless geek cred and it hurt his pride. And, you know, he needed to know it too, in case he ever got separated from...in case he had to make these comm calls himself.

He heard the fizzling, crackling feedback-y noises that always reminded him of a dial-up Internet connection—probably was—and then some static-y dead air that was soon replaced by the sound tone that could be taken by eavesdroppers or unwanted listeners-in to be random noise, but the people who knew how to connect to the Resistance's wireless communicaes knew to be an invitation to input the correct password for access. Alyx dialed it in, her fingers moving with the unconscious, automatic speed of a girl dialing her best friend down the street's phone number or someone entering their own online password...and they were in. They got the smooth, clean dead air that let them know they had connected, but were waiting for the other end to pick up. A few seconds more, and:

"White Forest Comm Station 2, identify."

It was Schlomi—they could tell by the terseness of the greeting and the seriousness in the voice.

"Hi Schlomi, it's Alyx and Gordon."

"...Evening, Alyx. Hello, Dr. Freeman. You've found a safe location from the storm?"

"Yeah, we found a little abandoned building to hole up in."

"Is it on high ground?"

"...Yeah, why? Is the storm gonna be that bad?"

"The weather forecast is saying it's going to dump about 30 to 60 centimeters, with winds about 30 knots."

Gordon's eyes widened. He might not be any good with post-Combine technology, but he was very good with metric, and he knew that was almost two feet of water that would be pouring down on them, and gale-force winds.

Alyx paused. "Are you serious?!"

"It was supposed to be just a thunderstorm, but the guys who work on the satellites say it hit some kind of cold air front coming off the Caucasus they weren't expecting, and it's going to be worse. They are recommending to everyone who can to return to the base for safety or else take shelter. There might be danger of flash floods."

Alyx was looking wide-eyed at Gordon. "When's it going to pass?" he whispered, forgetting that if she wasn't pushing the TRANSMIT button on the microphone that Schlomi couldn't hear him.

"When is this thing gonna pass, Schlomi?"Alyx asked into the microphone.

"It will be all night into part of tomorrow. We suggest you stay where you are. You have food and ammunition?"

"Yeah, Schlomi, we're set, just...we were supposed to be checking out that CP outpost."

"If anyone is there, they will not be leaving tonight. No one is going out of doors at all tonight, Alyx."

"Wow...okay, I guess we'll be alright. Tell everyone we're safe and have a place to take cover for the night. I guess we'll try to pick up where we left off tomorrow as early as it's safe."

"That is advisable, Alyx. Check back in tomorrow before you head out, yes?"

"Sure thing, Schlomi, we'll call you."

"Be safe."

"You too."

The line returned to the softer dead air, and Alyx turned to Gordon, her eyes wide.

"I guess…I guess we're stuck here for the night!"

For the night...for the night...the words rang in Gordon's head, ominous...this would be...awkward. More than awkward, difficult. His heart was thudding a little too much for someone who had merely been told that the weather was inclement, and his mouth was getting dry again. Although a little ball of nervous, excited energy was starting to spark in his stomach...and it wasn't unpleasant. Gordon stamped down on that as quickly as he could; that wasn't allowed, and he let the sick-nervous feeling take it's place again, preferring it to where the excited-nervous feeling might lead.

"Maybe we should dig in...I think your corn and green beans are ready."

Alyx blinked, as if she'd forgotten about the food. "Oh!"

He rummaged around in the backpack for a fork for her and then took the can opener and cracked the can open. He handed it to her...and she smiled at him, that teasing look in her eyes. Then she ducked her face away, pushing some hair out of it, and said, taking the can, "Thanks".

"What?" he asked, his stomach sinking as the sour feeling worsened.

"I can open a can of vegetables myself, Gordon," she smirked.

What? What did...?

"I just..."

"I know...you were just being a gentleman", she teased, digging her fork in to stir the contents of the can. A gentleman...the instinct he always had to fight so hard to hide, that instinct to show her non-platonic affection, was trying to sneak out. He had to make it look like something else—had to, or that bed in the other room was looming.

"Sorry, didn't mean to be…like..."

She laughed. "I'm teasing you, Gordon! I know you know I'm a big girl."

He let his breath out; it looked like he was glad she wasn't offended, but really he was glad she was convinced he had thought she was. _Yes, it's a gender politics thing. Not a thing where I want to do things for you because...no, it's a gender politics thing. I'm white-knighting you...not trying to dote on you out of adoration._

She smirked at him again, that indulgent, teasing smile she used for him so often, and then dug into her food. Her face flickered for just a second—with what, Gordon didn't know—but she blinked and looked up at him again, and it was gone, her face in a composed smile.

"You gonna eat?" she said cheerfully, nodding her head toward the can of beans he hadn't put on the heating element yet. Oh. He reached over, used the can opener to crack a vent in the can lid as he had done for the other can, and set it on the burner. There.

Well...now he was "cooking" for himself, which took just as little effort as preparing the green beans and corn had, and he had nothing else to do but sit there. With Alyx. Who could eat, it was true, but otherwise had very little to do herself.

A pause.

"Schlomi sounded concerned on the comm," he said. "I think he was worried about the storm."

Alyx chortled. Schlomi had intoned everything in an extremely matter-of-fact way, with less emotion than a BBC news anchor reporting on the stock exchange. It was a tendency of the comm operator's: everyone knew Schlomi to be very unemotive and almost grave, always seeming like he was about to tell you your grandmother had died, but with no feeling about the news or your reaction at all. His almost military-like stiffness and formality was known around the base; people joked that Schlomi could hear the news about the war finally ending and the Combine being gone for good, and would just nod and say, "Thank you, that is very good to know," in his thick Israeli accent, then go about his business as he had been.

"You know Schlomi,"Alyx replied, "I'm sure he's locked up in his room somewhere, hugging a teddy bear, the big crybaby."

There was that sparkle in her eye that she had inherited from her father. It always meant she was being mischievous. Barney had told Gordon that Alyx had learned what Barney called Vance Humor from her father, and to look out for it, because between the two of them, they could come up with one-liners delivered so drily but so out-there that you'd double over laughing and they'd just grin slyly.

The little eye-sparkle was very attractive to Gordon; he couldn't help thinking it seductive, and wondered if she did that on purpose. Because it definitely worked. Far from thinking about her father, the look made him think of feminine wiles and himself being swept away by the kind of charm you only ever heard about in legends about queens and aristocratic paramours anymore. He didn't think, he just wanted to extend that look, please it, do whatever it wanted of him.

"Serious Schlomi, crying into a pillow."

The moniker made Alyx bark out a laugh that caused her to almost spit out her food; she slapped her hand to her mouth, giggling with half-sound into her hand, her sides shaking.

He'd done that. He'd made her laugh.

He liked that. He tried some more.

"Is something funny, Alyx? Maybe we should dial Schlomi and ask him what he thinks."

Alyx had gulped down the food in her mouth and was now giggling close-mouthed into her arm.

"I don't know what you find so funny, Alyx. Schlomi was almost in tears."

Alyx had been reduced to laughing so hard she was still silent, but only because she was struggling for air.

"I don't know why we don't just put Schlomi in charge of morale; he's such a shining example to us all."

Finally, sound came out as Alyx hysterically laughed and gasped for breath.

"Serious Schlomi: he's…_seriously_ empathetic."

The joke had ceased to be about Schlomi, never really was about him; the goal was to see how absurdly far he could take the joke. And it had worked. Alyx was howling, leaning against the battered couch for support, gasping, "Oh my God!"

He watched her close to tears with laughter at the corny joke he'd been making, and felt a little glow. Pride? Connection with another human being? Didn't matter. It made him feel good. He had made Alyx laugh. He allowed himself one of the rare, real smiles he knew had always been rare in him, but were now as scarce as ghosts, and added an indulgence of one of his soft laughs. This was one of the things he liked about Alyx: the joke wasn't really that funny, but they both had such a...well, dorky sense of humor, they appreciated it in each other, half for face value and half for the very corniness of it. They could just be two dorks together, easy, comfortable—

Gordon stopped that train of thought short. He realized she was looking at him from laughing eyes and he loved it. Loved it too much. He brought the wall crashing down in his mind, forcing his facial features into a composed, blank look, the one he usually wore when out fighting or on some errand that would require him to risk life and limb. It was a poker face to make statues envious, with maybe a touch of dulled trauma that made people fantasize romantic notions about how bad a case of PTSD he surely had.

"Beans are ready", he said, taking them abruptly off the stove whether they were or not. He felt around for the can opener, cracked the can open, sniffed...it probably actually was okay, but Gordon was going to eat it now whether it was warm or not. He stirred the beans with a fork, sneaking a covert glance at Alyx.

A sidelong glance, examining, and then she turned back to her food, as if she found something funny.

They both dug into their food, and then Alyx asked, through a mouthful of vegetables, "So how are we sleeping tonight?"

Gordon stopped mid-chew. She had said it casually, and was wiping her hands together to clean them off...and then looking at him. He felt this was going to be one of the most important conversations of his life so far...and the woman he wanted more than any other was asking him a question that might determine the future of their relationship...he just hadn't expected, somehow, for conversations like this to happen through mouthfuls of food.

He used that to his advantage and worked on pulverizing the already-swallowable beans in his mouth some more, as if considering before he answered. He finally gulped them down and said, "Weren't we going to do shifts again, like we usually do?"

"Well, I figured," Alyx replied," there's nothing—nothing—going out in that storm tonight. The Combine are going to be pinned down wherever they are, and the wildlife"—she meant zombies, antlions and the kind, he knew—"is liable to be holing up as well."

"Even zombies? I mean…I didn't take them for the kind to know well enough to get out of the rain. Or that it was raining."

"Yeah, they tend to get swept away by even big puddles with a slight current; they're not too steady on their legs. And we're on high ground, anyway; climbing it will be hard for them, unless they take the route we did."

_Edward…Bryan…Jennings_, he cursed mentally; her superior mind for tactics and survival logistics meant that while he'd been fretting about how to keep them both in their clothes, she'd already had a solid reason they didn't need to sleep in shifts. She was looking at him, waiting.

"What's this couch like?" he tried, motioning to the couch they'd been afraid to touch for fear of fleas or mold...or worse. Maybe it didn't have anything living in it, microbial or extraterrestrial, and he could play the gentleman card again: _"Alyx, I insist, you take the bed. I'll be fine out here!"_

Alyx blinked—maybe she had forgotten about that option...or couldn't believe how hard he was trying to avoid getting into a bed with her. Either way, she promptly stood up, unholstering her gun, and gave the thing a careful once-over, leaning in and examining stuffing that was coming out and rips and patches in the fabric. He got up and unholstered his crowbar, anticipating that this was the perfect kind of place for a headcrab to build a nest and he'd had quite enough of the babies, thank you very much, on Xen.

"Seems not to be too dusty...doesn't smell mildewed...no signs of fleas or rats…I'm gonna give it a kick." He raised his crowbar into a ready position in response. He had excellent reflexes with the thing, and it was his preferred weapon for headcrabs; he found a baseball-bat-like motion to be very effective.

Alyx, her gun in front of her, leaned away from the couch as far as she could while still being able to kick it...and gave the thing a solid, but not damaging, kick. Dust poofed up...but nothing else. She gave it another kick to be sure...and they heard scrabbling. Like little claws.

She grimaced at him, and he returned the look; "Just what we suspected."

He edged forward, the flat, straight end of the crowbar out first, and Alyx backed up to cover him. He slowly edged the flat end of the crowbar under the seat cushion...looked to Alyx...she nodded to say she was ready...he turned back...and flipped the couch cushion up.

They heard a high-pitched squeal and something launched itself at Gordon's face; he swung..._and missed_...Alyx pulled him back instead of shooting, he tripped backwards over the little table, and she came down on top of and across him; he raised his crowbar in preparation for it to leap again...

And saw that the wildlife in this case was actually terrestrial, as a small, wide-eyed squirrel—a harmless tree-dwelling squirrel, although right now it's fur was puffed up in rage and it was chattering a high-pitched, angry noise in one long note at them—was taking a defensive stance, teeth-bared, a few feet away.

"Oh for the love of..."

"Is it rabid?"

"No, just mad."

"Are you hurt?"

"Um...good question..."

"Sorry..."

"No biggie...you okay?"

"Actually...I might have landed funny on the table..."

"Here..."

They struggled to their feet, checking themselves and each other for bruises, getting back their composure, while the stupid rodent kept up it's high-pitched_ raaaaaaaaaa_ at them. Alyx, a few strands of her hair falling out of her hairband, reached for her gun, which she'd dropped by learned habit to avoiding firing it amiss, checked the weapon, and then, glaring at the little animal still making the ungodly noise, asked Gordon, "Do we want squirrel with our beans and corn?"

"Well, don't waste a bullet," he replied, "and let's see if it has friends first. If it does, I'll get them with my crowbar and we can make a spit over the fire. I could use the protein, myself."

"Been a while since I had any meat other than headcrab," Alyx was muttering, as he edged toward the couch again, crowbar raised. The chattering took on a higher note and Alyx raised her gun at the little ball of fur and rage on the wooden floor. It seemed to know what having a gun pointed at it meant—even the wildlife seemed to be more jaded and savvy in the 21st century—and sufficed for glaring right back, it's tiny chest heaving in quick rodent breaths with adrenaline-fueled panting.

He edged his face over the inside of the couch, peering in with the crowbar held aloft...pushed his glasses back to keep them from falling off...squinted...

"Alyx...I think it's just babies."

"Babies?" Alyx cocked an eyebrow quizzically.

"I don't see any bigger ones...these look like baby squirrels, not mice, right?"

She edged her own face over the opening where the cushion had been, and observed the tiny, peach-fuzzed baby mammals of some sort clustering together for warmth, their eyes still closed.

"Yeah, those are squirrels. See the ears, and the long tails?"

The tails were hairless, not bushy at all, but they didn't look like a mouse's. Alyx sighed. Turning to the mother of the brood, who was beside herself with chattering and squealing, hissing and spitting, growled, "Fine, you get a reprieve! Stupid little..."

"Are we sure...?"

"It's a mother with babies. Are _you_ gonna smash those little things with the crowbar? Besides, there's not enough meat on all of them together to justify the work."

He lowered his crowbar."...And I guess they were here first.." she was grumbling, rubbing her hip-bone where she'd fallen. "Does this look bruised to you?"

He let his eyes fall...to her hip, her shirt lifted up a little to expose the skin. Which was red, yes, and might bruise...but otherwise her skin was perfect, an even-all-over-tone, taking on a lighter shade in the glow of the fire where the flesh curved outwards more. And her jeans, practical but still flattering, somehow, he'd always wondered where she found clothes in this post-apocalyptic wasteland it wasn't like she could go to the mall anymore and yet she looked so good and what did the skin underneath the fabric look like and did it curve more and—

"It's fine," he said, his voice constricted, gulping and looking away. He could feel her looking at him, and he turned back to her.

She was watching him with pupils made wide by the firelight, her face flushed with exertion, her hair attractively fighting against the hairband for freedom and framing her face. She was breathing a little heavily, probably from adrenaline, as he was too...but as he looked at her, her breath got slower but not more shallow. And he noted his own lungs doing the same, and that his heart was still pounding and there was a stirring in his stomach...and elsewhere...

He kept returning her gaze, although for some reason the word _wall _was floating in and out of his mind like something nagging at him unconsciously without him knowing why or what it meant. He couldn't, didn't want to look away from her, considered offering to rub the bruise so the pain would go away...saw, in his mind's eye, how that would progress...

He was aware of the rain on the roof, it's smell, and of Alyx, and of his own body, and not of very much else. He hadn't realized, before she turned around, how very close in proximity they were to each other...and now he thought about how they had moved seamlessly, their teamwork flawless and wordless, as if they had practiced it beforehand, so naturally they worked together to deal with the

wall-squirrel. The...the squirrel-wall...the squirrel? The wall? What wall? The actual squirrel chose that moment to scrabble across the floor, it's claws noisy on the wood, up the pile of firewood and onto the wall, digging it's hold onto the logs that comprised it and changing the pitch of it's chattering...which somehow, had never stopped and they'd been oblivious to. The squirrel was on the wall...wall?...wall! WALL.

He envisioned, from memory, how a light zapping of electricity felt, and the warmth seeping across his body scattered. _WALL_.

"Are you alright?" he asked Alyx, composing himself, and she saw it too…snapped her head around to look at the little beast…

"Get off the wall! You get back into the couch, take your little babies, and..."

At this point, she seemed to realize she was yelling at an animal, and petered off. He chuckled, she turned back to him...looked embarrassed, pushed some hair out of her face...they leaned out of each other's space, both without prompting, and Gordon took a step back. He ran a hand through his hair, remembering to breathe properly again...

Some thunder chose to make an appearance then, reminding them of themselves and of their surroundings. Alyx sighed, "So what are we gonna do about the squirrel?"

"Well...I guess she wants us to back away from her babies..."

"Backing off!" Alyx directed at the squirrel, her hands up defensively. She was so adorable. _Wall!_

"Now we don't have the couch to use..." she mumbled absent-mindedly.

That brought his focus back.

"I...I mean..."

"Let's check out the bed and see if there's anything living in _that_." And she hustled over to the little half-partition and disappeared around it.

Oh no.

He had no choice but to follow her.

**A/N-Yeah, I just opened my story with an epigraph that was a quote from a Scandinavian symphonic fantasy metal band. Whatcha gonna do about it?;-p**

**Look for an epigraph for each chapter in this story, by the way. I'm trying that out with this story and I'm excited about it, lol.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N-This file has actually been ready for quite a while, so I'm sorry for the delay in uploading it. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have left reviews so far...I'm kind of floored, you're all wonderful!:-)**

**Again, a shout-out to deyanire for helping me stay motivated. Just a heads up to you all, there's some mild language in this chapter, although I've tried to keep it watered-down. Other than that...please don't kill me if this turns out not the way you want it, haha.**

**Without further ado, here's Chapter 2!**

_"Love is the finest, the most shuddering_

_the most unendurable, silence."_

_-"The Lovers", Jaime Sabines._

Gordon didn't know what to do.

_"Let's check out the bed...let's check out the bed..."_

He didn't know how to avoid this, the awkwardness that would ensue, and the uncertainty of dealing with the situation...so he just delayed it. He looked around for the couch cushion, found it, moved to put it back on the couch...the squirrel hissed at him, thinking he was going to crush her babies.

"You can...I'm putting it back on gently, you can still get in from the side!" he growled at the little animal. It was eying him the way he might eye someone coming at his work PC with a heavy wrench insisting they were going to _fix_ his computer..._uh-huh, sure...keep your hands where I can see them_. He slowly, gently laid the cushion down on the couch again, then gave the squirrel an "after you" gesture. It didn't oblige, still eying him warily, and he sighed.

Well, now he had no options left but to go into the little room/partition thing with Alyx. He felt like parting with the squirrel with a gladiator's salute: _"We who are about to die salute you!"_ He didn't, of course, and stumped off into the little section of the cabin.

Alyx was waiting there...and so, to his dismay, was the bed, which he somehow had half-hoped would have vanished into thin air.

"Did you take care of the squirrel, Gordon?"

"Uh-huh," he nodded.

"Aww!" she said, "Very gallant of you!"

Here she winked. He had eventually figured out when she was making one of her not-too-skillful passes at him, and knew he should deflate this one, given the situation. So he merely answered by shrugging.

She did, in fact, deflate a little, causing him to berate himself, _You're a jerk, Freeman!_

But she seemed undeterred, starting again with, "So I guess we've only got the bed—"

"Do you want the first shift, or should I take it?"

Alyx blinked. "We already decided, Gordon, we don't have to sleep in shifts. There's no point. We can both get a full night's sleep and be ready for tomorrow."

"Oh...so...I mean, with the suit..." He patted his HEV suit, referencing the fact they were both aware of that it took about two minutes to power down and a few more to physically remove from his body—and about as much time to reverse the process when he got back into it. It meant that he usually slept as best he could with it still on, in case they were attacked suddenly.

"There's clothes right in the drawer, remember? You want to try some on?"

He hesitated. Now he was trying to think up another reason...and it wasn't coming. The silence stretched and was getting uncomfortable. Some thunder vaguely rumbled off in the distance, and the wind picked up, knocking branches from some unseen tree outside against the wall of the cabin.

At this point, they both knew they were seeing through each other. And it was painful how uncomfortable it was. He had to dig them both out of this situation, had to—

It wasn't coming. And they both knew what was on the table now. Both knew, and didn't know what to do about it. And, horror of all horrors, as that little unspoken, only-hinted-at fact sat there driving a spike into each of their minds right now, and the silence stretched, Gordon felt as if he could sense a distance growing between them.

Alyx was crossing her arms over herself too tightly, a self-protective gesture. She looked like he felt. And he wanted to help her, it was just an instinct at this point, one he'd never had to learn, one he'd tried to unlearn—but it was there, and he had to fix this. He tentatively tried to say something, anything.

"Alyx," he began...

She sighed, and a darkened look came over her face, a disgusted look of frustration. His breath caught in his throat.

"What?" he asked.

She was massaging her forehead with a look of being fed up. "Dammit, Gordon, just..." She paused, and he couldn't tell if she was hurt or angry or both. "Just come out and say it."

He felt his eyebrows jump up his forehead. Was he missing something? "What...wha...?"

"Just come out and say that you don't want me."

Gordon hadn't expected that. He blinked. Was he misinterpreting...?

"I'm just...quit stringing me along, cut it out with the games and the pretending you don't notice, I'm just...I'm sick of it. Just...come out and say you don't want me."

Gordon felt like he'd been hit in the face with a brick. Actually, that had happened to him recently, and this wasn't the same. It was like taking the brick to his stomach at high velocity without the HEV suit, WHILE being _punched_ in the face. Alyx stood there before him, her face hurt, but more angry, glaring sideways at the floor, refusing to look at him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest and the amber of her irises glittering like jewels through the half-lit room as they burned her wounded feelings into the floor. The rain fell outside the window in loud sheets and gusts, and the words hung between them, never able to be taken back, not able to be unacknowledged.

And what could he do? What could he say? She was mad at him, hurt by him, she was feeling bad and it was his fault, and the world was _wrong, _just so very _wrong_. How could someone like Alyx be allowed to think she couldn't have him, if it was in his power to give himself? The carefully choreographed dance between them had been revealed for just what it was, a performance, a show, a simulation—not reality. The music had come crashing to a cacaphonous, ungraceful halt and the dancers now had to deal with each other as people, not performers. There wasn't any going back to the point they had been at five minutes ago. And she was angry with him, and he couldn't stand it. If it was within his power to remove or undo or lessen the hurt, he'd throw himself into a fire to do it.

And so, with a monumental effort, he let the wall within him crumble away to soil.

He just didn't know, now, how to deal with her without that wall. He'd been so hungry for it's absence for so long, but now he realized it had been so practiced in him, he didn't know how _not_ to do it. So the silence stretched for a few agonizing, burning-white-hot seconds that each felt unendurable...until she finally met his eyes. They glittered at him sharply, accusingly, demanding accountability, the way a predatory cat's eyes let a soon-to-be-meal know to acquiesce it's dire hold on the affinity to live.

He turned his own gaze sideway to the floor now. He felt caught in a horrible misdeed, exposed for what he was, something spineless and living off a conveniently-manufactured and empty reputation, and just downright _weak_. Wall-less, he felt naked and childlike, and the instinct to wring his hands and apologize desperately, hot tears dribbling down his face, sprung up perversely from a remembered part of his five-year-old self. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it, it was a mistake. Please don't be mad at me, I'll do anything, anything you want, if you'll just promise not to be mad at me anymore._

But no. He was a man, or at least supposed to be one. A man who couldn't give the woman he loved, adored over all other things, emotional honesty…but not a five-year-old child caught in a crime. And so he made his voice as loud and as steady as he could as he answered her, "That's not true."

This wasn't followed by anything either, because it hadn't been thought-out that far ahead, and had cost such a monumental effort to say. And so it hung there between them as well, his difficult words and hers bumping up against each other like confused balloons trying to navigate an air current and unable to negotiate around each other. He struggled to think of something else to say, but it was so hard...if this had been a movie, one of those dumb, stupid melodramas where two people got caught together in a cabin in the woods during a rainstorm and everything happened the way people wanted it to, he'd have a nice little soliloquy written out for him, where he could express his feelings and make it right, make it nice, make it neat and clean and unhurtful and _better_, fix what was broken all of a sudden, and give them a happy ending.

But no words were coming, the pressure too great, too much at stake. Because he couldn't lose Alyx, couldn't let her esteem for him fall, couldn't be something weak and unworthy and anything other than any and every little thing she wanted him to be, in her eyes.

And he was afraid that if he didn't handle this right, what they did have—not what he wanted it to be, but one of the best things that had ever happened to him nonetheless—would be destroyed, blasted apart beyond hope of repair. The pressure made him fumble, struggle to continue...

"I don't think I believe you," she said. He looked at her again and now she was angry, her face twisted into an ugly expression that didn't suit her with her accusation and hurt.

And he was dumbfounded. What did...what did one say to that, what was he supposed to answer? Was he supposed to argue now to convince her he was, in fact, attracted to her, wildly so? It had cost so much to tell her what he just had and now she was throwing it back in his face. Was he too late?

Complete honesty. No walls, not even a semblance of them. That was what he needed to do. To make this better, to fix that hurt look on her face, to prove himself worth her time of day, to win her back—no, just to keep her. Gordon wasn't used to talking this way, interacting this way with people, so the words struggled out of his mouth; maybe not having a filter between his thoughts and his words also meant not having a bridge between him and her?

"I really need you to believe me when I say that that's not true."

Silence again. The wind knocked some branches against the cabin windows while he tried to find his next words. Alyx spoke instead.

"So what, there's...there's somebody else? I knew it, there had to be some other woman...right? Back...back wherever you came from."

Gordon was dumbfounded. "No."

"So...you're gay, then?" His look of indignation seemed to answer that for her. "Commitment phobia. Some kind of trauma or something. Please, there's gotta be something."

"Alyx..." he said,"...I want to give you a commitment—a real, serious commitment—so bad. I mean serious. It…kind of scares me and I've been worried it would scare you too. I'm not..." he swallowed, because his mouth had gone dry again, "I'm not used to feeling this way about anybody. I...I haven't felt this way toward anybody else in my life. Ever."

"Then what the heck, Gordon?! What the heck?!" she cut him off, seemingly annoyed by the depths of his drama. "I don't understand! I'm right here! I've been throwing myself at you—_throwing_ myself at you!—I look like an idiot, and I know it, and everybody else who sees us together knows it, and I keep doing it because I want—I need some kind of response from you! And I know you're into me, I can see it, before you cover it up, but that's the thing; you always cover it up, you try to hide it! You try to make it seem like you're not interested and I know you are and you're just turning me down for some other reason and I don't know what that is, and it _hurts_, Gordon!"

She had yelled all this at him, and now her eyes were watering, close to brimming over. Oh God.

"Please don't cry," he started, wrenched, panicking—he always hated seeing Alyx cry and he wasn't sure he could handle her crying because of him—but she cut him off again:

"Dammit, I'll cry if I want to! _I'm_ not the one who's repressed here. I'm not the one who's not letting myself feel anything! I'm not the one cutting myself off from people!" Her eyes went ahead and did the job properly, brimming over and tracking down her face. He couldn't tell if they were upset tears or angry ones, but knew they were probably both. And he knew he deserved to hear this, because he had never denied any of this to himself; it was just knowing that she knew too, and was calling him out on it, that was a punch in the gut. But he deserved it. So he just stood there and took it.

She stopped then, gathered her breath, heaving it in with anger and the tears that were unashamedly leaking out of her eyes. She seemed to be waiting for him to answer. He started in again on trying to get some answers and honesty for her out of his depths.

"I...I don't like holding myself back from you, Alyx. I hate it. It hurts me too—honestly. It's exhausting, and it makes me miserable. Believe me, I don't want to, and…if I felt like I had any choice—any choice whatsoever, any way I could make it happen, even if it meant…hacking off my own arm or something—I'd be yours, a hundred percent. If I could, I'd...I'd give you...everything...All of me."

There. He'd said it. He wasn't going to come out with what he was suddenly thinking of as "the L-bomb"—this, because it seemed as dangerous and all-powerful as an atomic bomb right now—because, honestly, he couldn't manage that right now. Those three words, those tiny, innocuous three words had tremendous power: the power to make and break human relationships, to fundamentally change things, to make people forget themselves and do stupid things and betray their values and friends, to give up too much, to cost too much, to care too much. The rain pattered on the roof. He chanced a quick, fleeting look at her, because it was all he could manage, and even that took a whole lot of effort. She seemed to be softening to him a little.

"Really?"

Her voice wasn't weak or hungry, not begging or skeptical or demanding; it was her straight, unadorned, seeing-through-things, pulling-no-punches voice, the one that made him know she was treating this, and, he felt, his feelings, with the utmost seriousness.

Thank _God_.

"Yes," he said, as loudly and affirmingly as he could muster, which somehow turned out to end up as a kind of hissing or choking of vehemence.

And she seemed to take him at his word. Her eyes slunk off in the direction of the corner of the floorboards, vulnerability creeping in again. "Then why?..."

He sighed loudly, and let his head loll back on his shoulders as he ran his hands through his hair with duress. "Ohhh boy...how to even begin..."

Her eyebrow had risen half a notch over her browline as she watched him; not surprised, not skeptical, just waiting for an answer. But how to talk about G-Men and her father and secretly-complicit allies and conspiracies that made you feel crazy and her own unknown obligation without dragging her into all of it too? How to spare her her peace of mind? How to...not appear crazy or delusional, for that matter?

At this point, he really just wanted to tell her everything, desperately wanted to confide in someone, her especially, and to give her the complete honesty he was striving for. But he was afraid; he was sure that the G-Man's employment was one of those things you only knew about if you were involved, and if you came to know by accident, you got involved, whether you wanted to or not.

And Gordon would destroy himself if he caused that happen to Alyx, he knew. He'd devolve into some kind of mental breakage or just have to off himself, if he felt like he deserved the surcease from the guilt, or just up and leave...life, and people, and everything about it, or...something. Something over-the-top and unthinkable, he didn't know what, but he didn't want to find out. He would not let Alyx—the person he cared about more than himself or anybody in his life, for that matter—and who he understood was vital to the Resistance and to humanity in general for her value to morale—to be enslaved, isolated, cut off from humanity, his own and everyone else's, the way he had.

"I...have this..._obligation_...that I have to deal with, and...and I don't want to get you involved. I...I don't know how to explain it really, because I don't understand it very much myself, but...I'm...I'm really scared of what it could mean for you if I let you get too close. I don't really know how to explain it, but like I said, I...I want to give you everything I have of myself, but I'm not myself to give right now. And I'm really not sure about that ever changing in the future."

He swallowed, took some steadying breaths...had he let slip anything he shouldn't have? Had he been vague enough to keep her safe, but given her enough of an idea of what he meant to make his behavior justified?

"So...you don't want anything to happen until the war is over, you're saying? Until the Combine are gone, or something, or...?"

Sigh. No. No he hadn't, not nearly.

"I...I'm kind of in a situation where...I have somebody else calling the shots and I don't really get to make my own decisions about my life, Alyx. I don't know if I can change it, and I don't think I can, but...it's a really, really..._horrible_ experience, having to have all the decisions made for you and not be able to have any kind of input and...I worry that if I let something happen between us, you'll get put into the same situation…and maybe I can keep that from happening if I don't."

She sighed, seemingly exasperated, looked away, rubbed her temple, looked back at him.

"Gordon..."

"What?" he asked, trying to keep the terror out of his voice; this look was not how he had expected her to react, not how he needed to have her respond to this.

"...You...you take this tortured messiah thing really seriously."

What the...?

"Tor...'tortured messiah thing?!'"

That had crossed a line. She obviously thought he meant the whole One Free Man thing and the Resistance making him do all the hard work and the stupid civilians falling all over themselves to be in awe of him and none of them would stop it and just realize he was a human being, for crying out loud...

He tried to rein in his anger, with some success. She just hadn't understood him.

"I wasn't speaking metaphorically."

She sighed again. "So…what, so you're taking this whole 'savior of humanity' thing seriously enough that you're gonna martyr yourself for what everyone wants you to be, though? And it's not metaphorical?"

"I'm not...it's not metaphorical because that's not what I'm talking about! If it was just that, then I wouldn't care what everybody wanted and I'd PDA on the Breencast screens to get the point across!"

"Then what, then?! What is it, if it's not that?! I'm not understanding you, Gordon!"

"I...Alyx, I'm really...I'm trying to tell you what I can, and it's really difficult, I have to...I have to really watch how I talk about it-"

"Why?! Just come out and say it!"

"I can't! It's not that simple. I...I really worry that if I let you know what I know—which is honestly very little, and you can't imagine, even, how little I actually know that I need to—I'm just really worried that it's one of those things where, if you know anything, or too much, you have to get involved, and I don't want that to happen to you."

"Oh for...Gordon, I thought you knew me well enough not to try to protect me and all that crap. I thought I didn't have to deal with-"

"I'm not trying to protect you, Alyx, I—okay, honestly, I know very little. And I don't know how to get more information, and I'm afraid if I ask the wrong person, something'll happen or—"

"Like what?"

"Like...maybe they'll have to get involved too, or...or I'll get yanked away from here or something and sent off somewhere else, or...maybe something bizarre, I really _do not know_."

"So you don't know enough, you can't talk about what you do know, and if you do, you don't know what will happen?"she summarized.

He stammered for a second, trying to produce words in his indignation. "Yes! That's what I'm saying. I can't...if it were up to me, Alyx, I'd pour out my guts to you, I'd tell you everything I know, because I'd feel better telling you than anyone else, and I know I could trust you with it. But I really, really am worried—and I think it's very reasonable in this case—that there'll be some very real, concrete, extremely negative consequences if I do that. For you, and for me. And I know this is vague and it's frustrating and I don't want it to be, it's frustrating me to death right now, and it has in the past too, but I really, really don't have a choice. And..."

Oh God. This wasn't going to end happily no matter what he did. He rubbed his face.

"I know that doesn't help and it doesn't make it any better, and I'm...I'm sorry, Alyx, I'm so, so sorry, I don't like this and I don't know how to change it, but if I could, I would do it in a heartbeat, and I need you to believe that."

Alyx was rubbing her upper lip with the side of her hand, not looking at him. It was a gesture of annoyance, of frustration. "So...you can't even tell me why you're gonna shove me away and not let anything happen between us, is what you're saying?"

He gaped a little. That was _not _what he'd been trying to...

"That's not...Alyx, I'm..."

"'Cause it sounds like you're rejecting me and this is just a really flaky cop-out."

'A really flaky cop-out'? 'Rejecting her'? He couldn't let her think that, no, no, that wasn't okay. He started panicking, trying to figure out what to say, because how could Alyx be allowed to think he wasn't interested in her, how could smart, fun and funny, cool, sexy Alyx, Alyx who understood him and who meant more to him than anyone ever had before, who he'd dance the conga with an Advisor for, who could have any man she wanted and for some reason wanted him, the one man she couldn't have…be allowed to think that he didn't want her with every ounce of his being? He had to explain, he had to get on his knees and rhapsodize, convince, he had to _make_ this woman understand that he wanted her more than anything he'd ever wanted in his life.

"Alyx...every guy who meets you goes crazy for you, and I know that. You can have any guy you want, and I don't know why it's me, I don't know how I got so incredibly lucky, and I know that if I say no, another guy can come along in a heartbeat and I'll have to watch you be with him instead of me and it'll kill me, but I'll have to do it...and I know I'm never going to have the chance again, and I lay awake at night trying to think of ways it could work, because I've never..."

How to frame this…

"I spent my whole childhood determined to get into MIT, and then I got into quantum entanglement and was determined to make a name for myself in it, and I wanted those things so bad...and I was hungry for them and I worked for them—slaved away, worked myself to the bone for them—and I just...I never wanted those things half as much as I want you. I thought...people used to look at me, when I was going for my doctorate, going way beyond what I had to for my dissertation, and chasing after job leads and making up lists of which of them would give me the best shot at what I wanted...people told me I was single-minded. I had one guy tell me I was like a madman...once in Innsbruck, I was watching an experiment, and someone told me I had this look in my eye, they said—what was it, something weird—like I was consumed, or something, whatever, something like that, with this curiosity or this thirst—I don't remember, it was something in German I'm not remembering how to translate too well—but..."

He started bringing it back around to the point of the story before she could think he was crazy.

"As...hungry, or as consumed, or single-minded, or possessed, or passionate, or whatever it was, as I was about...anything else, ever, in my life..."—he put his hand to his face, because he knew how he had to sound—"I know I probably sound kind of weird right now, and I'm not very good with words, but...please believe me, if I had any way or any choice in making it happen...if I thought it was at all within my reach, in any way, or if I could change anything to make it that way...I would do it. I'd...I try not to think about what I'd do for you, Alyx, honestly, because it scares me. And I don't say any of this partly because I'm scared it'll scare you, but...please know I'm sincere."

Oh God, that had been horrible. But he'd said it, he'd offered his heart up on a nice little platter, and been as honest with her as he could be. Hopefully she got the message.

He chanced a sideways glance at her—he hadn't been able to look at her at all, never mind look her in the eye, as he said all this. She seemed to be evaluating it all, trying to decide whether or not to allow herself to believe it. Maybe she believed the part about him wanting her, just not about his thinking it was impossible to have her.

"See, Gordon..." He waited with baited breath for the other shoe to fall. "I think...I want to believe you, and I think maybe I do, but...I've seen guys when they're crazy about a woman. I've seen how they can get, and it_ is _pursuit, it _is _this all-consuming...thing, and...guys will basically move mountains for a woman if they think it'll get her to fall for them. I've seen it, I've had it directed at me a few times. And...I've seen you get this look in your eye, when you talk to me, sometimes, and I think it's that look...but then you pull it back, you shut it away, you...you take it back. And I'm really trying to get what you say about obligation or whatever, but..."

She hesitated, seeming to try to make up her mind about something. She had one hand on each temple, as if trying to figure something out or piece something together.

"Okay, I...I think maybe...I think I believe you...about being interested in me. I...okay, I can believe that. I guess what I'm having a hard time trying to believe is that it's out of reach, the...the part about serious consequences to letting me get too close. Because you're not giving me a whole lot of information, and...you're saying you can't, but I need something, I...if this is making you miserable, and it's making me miserable, and we can fix it...but you're saying we can't..."

"I'm saying...my hands are tied. I'm saying I can't make decisions for myself or about my own life, and it's because there's this...real, non-metaphorical, tangible, external threat, I don't know what to call it, really...that could cause very real, very concrete, very negative consequences for both of us, and...I know you can handle a lot, Alyx, you can handle more than anybody I've ever met, and you certainly can handle a lot more than me...but I really believe no one is equipped to deal with this. I know you hate to be protected, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was something...beyond the scope of your everyday, garden-variety, post-Combine trauma."

He risked a peek at her. She wasn't looking at him, but she seemed to want to smile at that, if only half-heartedly and if it wasn't really successful in happening. She nodded her head, still not looking at him, face directed at her shoes, and her arms folded tightly over herself.

"Okay...okay."

He allowed himself to breathe; he seemed to have been not doing so normally while she was evaluating his little soliloquy, his wherefore-art-thou-Alyx speech, and a weight seemed to be lifted disorientingly off his body, making him lightheaded with relief of it's thunder rumbled steadily in the near distance, and the wind was picking up; the little cabin creaked noisily in it's onslaught, but held fast.

"Not..." Alyx was speaking, licking her lips, her breathing picking up a little, as if she were preparing to dive off a cliff and was getting up the nerve..."Not even just...not even just for tonight?"

She kept her face downward, and her shoulders scrunched stiffly as she pushed some hair out of her face, looking embarassed, her toes edging together...timidly stealing a glance up at him, which was quickly diverted and kept trying to return to little avail.

Good God in heaven above, Alyx was propositioning him. It was real, it was happening, he wasn't just fantasizing, and he wanted to hug her like a grateful friend for going ahead and just coming out with it...and then tear her clothes off and lay her on the bed and go at it,_ not_ like a friend. They were in this tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere with just the two of them, and nobody would be able to hear or barge in, no college dorm roommate to sexile, no rebel lackeys to come rushing in telling them there was some kind of attack going on and grab his crowbar even though his crowbar happened to be_ busy_ at the moment, thank you very much—it was unreal and perfect and happening to him, why weren't angels descending to sing for them...

They weren't descending because as happy as this made him...and his crowbar...he knew he had to say no. He had to tell her no, deny her again, and she'd gotten up the nerve to ask him and was risking a lot, emotionally, if he rejected her again. And she looked vulnerable and he just wanted to take her in his arms and make her feel better because he cared about her and hated seeing her unhappy, and if that meant sex, he'd skip the tearing of clothing and the going at it like wild animals and just make love to her with everything he had in him, all the caring he could muster...

He had to be showing some of this on his face, because she was looking as if she were preparing for a piece of devastating news.

"Alyx...I have to pretend all this didn't happen in the morning."

"...Okay...?" Some hope there, but not sure of itself.

"If...if I do that...I can't pull myself back. I can't...I can't pretend this didn't happen, I can't keep this whole...tonight, from changing anything, and if...God...if things change, I can't let..."

He was breathing quickly now; he had this kind of panicky sensation, as if something were trying to get out from behind his eyes; they were stinging, but whatever reaction that was, he didn't know, it didn't seem to make sense because you didn't cry because you couldn't bang someone, so why was he feeling panicky and like he should fall over himself apologizing, begging for her pardon…like he had broken something precious and would never piece it back together again?

She recoiled a little, as if just having been told some unpalatable piece of information about herself that she had feared was true; her head was turned off to the side, her eyes turning downward with moistness, with hurt, with rejection. She scrunched her mouth up tightly, trying to hold something in...her face turned toward the floor, her eyebrows lowering, the miserable, hurt expression still there...

...her eyes clouding over as the hurt transformed...

...she bit her lip, straightened her shoulders, steadied her gaze at the floor in front of him...raised her eyes to him (he couldn't meet them full-on), glared at him, resentment burning, her lip no longer scrunching but pursing in a look he'd seen in her when she was indignant, but this wasn't quite the same, and her gaze was a laser-target and it made him feel in danger...

"I think you're just scared. I think you really are just scared, and it's not all this, or else you just like drama or self-abnegation or torturing yourself or whatever." She was building up steam now.

"I bet you're scared because if you let yourself feel anything good you have to let yourself feel the bad stuff too, and you can't deal with that! I think you still haven't dealt with all of a sudden being here and the world being a wreck and everyone worshipping you, and you can't deal with each new thing that comes up, either, because you've got a...a damn emotional _backlog_! Sometimes I think you haven't even dealt with your Resonance Cascade baggage like the others, and I don't get it—it's been twenty years, and everyone who's still alive has processed it, and you haven't, I think...but I still don't know where you've been for all that time and why you're still young and why it's like the past two decades never happened for you, and...and _I don't understand!_" The last part was rage and frustration—Gordon almost expected her to stamp her foot in fury.

"_And I don't like it!_ I don't _like _not understanding things, Gordon, it drives me crazy! And I especially don't like not understanding _you!_ I want to know how you work, and every time I think I've gotten you to stop being so…" she fumbled for words "…bizarrely…guarded, you do it again, you pull yourself away, and it _hurts_! You're not just denying _yourself_ something, Gordon, you're denying me too! And I think it's because you can't handle feeling anything, and I want to help you, but you're so damn _scared_!"

"What happened to, 'Oh Gordon, you're so brave, oh Gordon, you're so selfless'? Now I'm scared and self-abnegating!"

"Don't make fun of me—"

"I'm not making fun of you, it's what you said!"

"It's all well and good to be willing to throw yourself into a volley of bullets, Gordon, but if you don't deal with it in your head afterwards, it doesn't matter, it's not real bravery!"

"This isn't some stupid emotional garbage, okay, Alyx? There could be real-world consequences if...quit laughing!" She had scoffed at him as if what he said was ridiculous or over-dramatic, but she didn't understand—"I don't let anything happen between us because things could happen to you if I do!"

"Oh, really, Gordon? Really? You think some bad guy's gonna kidnap me because I'm your girlfriend and hold me hostage or some crap? Real life doesn't happen like in superhero movies, and I'm not your Mary-Jane Watson, I can take care of myself—I thought you knew that!"

"I do know you can take care of yourself, I know that perfectly well, don't think I'd write you off like that, you're a better fighter than me, and we both know it; I'm not talking about like that. When I say I'm not my own person, I mean it literally—I can't give myself because I'm...under contract or something, I don't even freaking know..."

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't know, and if you think not understanding things drives you crazy, you don't know what I'm dealing with every frikkin' day!"

"Then let me help you!"

"I CAN'T, Alyx, do you understand?! I'm trying to tell you I don't know what's happening to me and I'm afraid if I ask anybody, something horrible, I don't know what, but something very_ real_ and very horrible will happen, and if I tell you anything I do know or suspect the same thing will happen to you!"

"So you're wandering around clueless and if you ask for help your James-Bond-secret-identity will be blown and you'll have dragged me along—"

"Cut it out with the sarcasm!"

"—on some cross-continental adventure and I'll have to sever ties with everyone I know and take up a secret life of mystery and join the agency or whatever—"

Her mocking was unfortunately too close to reality, so he wasn't going to confirm or deny this.

"I don't have answers for myself, I can't give you answers, I can't give you what you want—what I want—because if you got pulled into the same situation I'm in, it would be my fault, and yes, I can't handle that. I know myself, I know what I can and can't handle, I'm trying to deal with all this as best I can, and I am feeling it, I feel it all the time, I just don't show it. And I want to let you help me, Alyx, but there's only so much I can let you do that, because if I let you too close to me, if I give you the answers I do know that you want, I'm scared it'll happen to you too. And yes, I'm scared of that. That, I know I can't handle."

"So you're rejecting me for my own good?"

"I'm not—I don't want to—"

"Right, right, and you're not protecting me either, because I'm such a good fighter and all."

"I meant you can handle a lo—you know what I meant, you're just mad at me!"

"Yeah, I'm mad! If you don't want to protect me and I can handle a lot, why don't you think I can handle whatever's going on with you?!"

"Because I can't handle it, Alyx, no one can! No one can deal with—"

"Oh you drama queen, you sound like a teenager!"

"You're really cruel when you're mad, do you know that?"

"_I'm_ cruel?! _I'm_ cruel?! You're the one stringing me along because I can't handle some deep dark secret of the Inner Workings of Gordon Freeman!"

He was getting madder.

"I'm hurting you now so I don't have to hurt you more later!"

"Oh, you're so noble, Gordon! Such a hero!"

"I'll add that to brave and self-abnegating!"

"If you want help so much, if you want _me_, I'm right here, and I'm making a _fool_ of myself throwing myself at you and you keep stringing me along because you're scared."

"Are you listening to a word I've said? Or are you too busy mocking me?"

"Quit calling me cruel!"

"Then stop _being_ cruel! Stop calling me James Bond and a superhero and a drama queen, and—"

"Oh, did I hurt your feelings? 'Cause _my_ feelings have been on a roller-coaster because the guy I'm crazy about doesn't _have_ any feelings for me or anything else! If you can have your feelings hurt, Gordon, maybe you're _not_ just a robot…or maybe if the only thing you let yourself feel is negative emotions I should just quit chasing you around like the pathetic sick puppy I am."

She seemed close to tears of rage now, still shouting at him.

"I should just give up like I should have ages ago! I'll scrape back what little dignity I've got left and get people to stop looking at me all pitying because _they _know it's pointless trying to mean anything to you and I'm only just figuring it out. And it's too freakin' bad, because we're both masochists, we could just torture ourselves together; you with your little messiah-with-a-burden-to-bear charade and me with my hoping you'll get down off your goddamn cross you've got yourself on and throw me some scraps!"

Too far. Too much.

"DO YOU WANT TO END UP LIKE ME?!" he belted, and he wasn't himself anymore, wasn't in possession of himself anymore—he had been able to keep a handle on himself until now, but it was just too much, just too much—"DO YOU WANT TO END UP LIKE I AM, JUST CUT OFF FROM EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER CARED ABOUT?! DO YOU WANT ME TO LET YOU END UP JUST SOME PSYCHO KILLER WITH NO EMOTIONS WHO'S AFRAID TO LET PEOPLE MEAN ANYTHING TO HIM BECAUSE THEY'LL JUST DIE, OR HE'LL DISAPPEAR?! I CAN'T TELL THE BEST THING THAT'S EVER HAPPENED TO ME WHAT SHE MEANS TO ME, BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW IF I'LL BE MAGICKED AWAY SOMEPLACE AT THE DROP OF A HAT AND BE GONE FOR ANOTHER TWENTY YEARS OR...or whatever!...I've got the most perfect person I've ever met –except for her absolutely _pernicious_ temper—head over heels for me, and I have to string her along!"

He had lost steam, but not all of it, and this bleeding in him needed to get out, wasn't going to stop surging till it ran dry.

"Do you want me to let you get put in the position where you go to sleep and then wake up and the entire damn world's some unreal science-fiction hell, and your best friend who used to be younger than you is now old enough to scold you like you're some dumb kid and your supervisor's daughter who used to be this cute little thing you played chess with all of a sudden has _curves_, and she's winking at you in a squad car while you're out killing freaking _aliens_, which are _your_ fault anyway, and she's had to grow up in this 1984 dystopia psycho-world because _you_ thought this job would look good on your resume?"

He was ranting now, he was fully aware, but maybe the walls had been a dam after all, and now that they were broken, the stream would just have to run it's course until it petered out.

"I don't reciprocate anything, Alyx, because I can't _give _you a relationship! You deserve a _boyfriend_, you deserve someone who's not going to vanish into thin air and then reappear again when you're forty or eighty, and will still be twenty-seven while you've spent your whole life wondering and have hated him for the past forty years because he left you in the lurch! I can't _handle_ that, Alyx! I want to be your boyfriend, dammit, I want to take you on _dates_, and do cute schmoopy things for you and dress up for Valentine's Day and worry whether it's good enough for you because it's not, and it never will be!"

He had to stop and catch some of his breath here. She was standing there blinking at him, looking as if she'd mistaken him for someone else and only now recognized him for his true self.

"I want to give you all that, Alyx, and I can't, and I hate having to block you out, I hate it..."

Fan-frikkin'-tastic, he wasn't able to keep the watery, choking feeling out of his voice anymore, and his eyes had finally given up and started oozing water, and his nose had decided to join in the party too and make him have to sniffle through it's congestion. _Fan-frikkin'-tastic, Freeman...maybe she thinks your voice is cracking because you've just had your Man Card revoked for crying to a girl about your feelings and how you can't take her to the sixth-grade dance._

He came to be aware again of the rain falling down outside the window, of the world outside...outside his own little head, where all this stupid stuff mattered. There was still a war going on and they still had to raid a CP bunker tomorrow and none of this was important to anyone else and it didn't really matter in the scheme of things. He could hear the rain pouring down in sheets, and this cabin was tiny, and it was just the two of them, and if she had half-wondered whether he was gay before, she now probably thought of him as something worse, something inexcusable: sensitive.

He had closed his eyes at some point, and now he allowed himself the indulgence of just rubbing his face with both hands, reaching up under his glasses, taking them off, massaging the bridge of his nose, wiping it with the armored sleeve of his suit...opening his eyes just enough to blink blearily, miserably at the floor for a second, then cup his temple in his hand...he leaned his head back again, breathed, "I'm sorry"…

...wiped his face with three fingers once more, then put his glasses back on—which didn't really have a point because he wasn't able to look at her at all right now anyway...

"I'm sorry, Alyx."

He said this in his usual soft, near-inaudible voice, although now it was tired from the exertion of emotion spent wildly after being dammed up for far, far, far too long.

And Alyx was looking at him...as if she felt for him. As if she understood now.

Okay. At least that had been accomplished. He had only had to devolve into Jerry Maguire to reach that point of communication with her, and she'd gotten in a few little knives in his chest herself, but she understood, now, that he was sincere in the utmost degree, and was, indeed, verifiably in agony with pining for her.

She had the kind of look on her face now that he associated with her thinking through a problem, solving some kind of situation they were in; analytical, but not cold or calculating, just deep in thought.

Then her eyes fell on him. Looked him right in the eye.

It was the first time in about half an hour they had met each other's gaze head-on, and he felt broken and damaged and spent and in need of repair, and she looked willing to do it. And he wanted her to, trusted her to.

"Gordon..." She reached for him...

And he winced, pulled back, as if afraid of another blow after a beating.

"Don't...Alyx, please...no..."

She jerked her hand back and looked at him with hot, fresh hurt in her eyes.

"I...I'm sorry..."

"It's okay..."

"No, it's not, because...because I..."

Oh God. No. Just no. Not anymore. Not any of this, anymore, ever again.

He could feel his throat closing up again, and his eyes stinging as if with fresh_ sensitivity_.

"I can't, because...because nothing can happen. Because of this. Nothing can happen, still." His voice was cracking and watery and it helped him mean the next sentence. "I...have to pretend to myself this didn't happen, in the morning, because I can't...I can't handle it. I still can't let anything happen, and this doesn't change that, but I have to keep the walls up to make that happen, to make all this work, and...and now it's going to be harder."

He sniffled, and couldn't look her in the eye, again, because she was being understanding, she was being caring, she was being a friend, but not just...she was being what he needed her to be. And he was having to tell her that he couldn't do the same for her. And then asking for more.

And it wasn't fair. It wasn't right, it wasn't okay, it wasn't equitable or reasonable, it wasn't how you treated someone you cared about, someone who meant the world to you...and he couldn't expect her to be okay with it. No way. No way could he reasonably expect her not to be hurt, to be angry, to give up, to have been pushed too far, probably to cut him out of her life for good now.

He just stood there, his eyes filling up again with salted misery, too much this time, so he couldn't see...he didn't care enough to blink them away, what was there to see, after all, but the woman he wanted for his soulmate finally throwing up her hands, giving up hope in him, and walking out the door to leave him in this weird little wood house that kept the rain out and made all the rules different from there on out. He was alone again, alone the way he had been on Xen, or when he first arrived in City 17—no—worse. He was as alone as he'd been in the mines.

And he was always going to be. And there was nothing to be done. Nothing but try to adapt to it, to never having anyone mean anything to him ever again.

"Okay," she breathed.

He looked up at her finally, had to. She looked...sad. Not upset, not hurt, just...sad. Tired. Disappointed. Resigned.

Hurt by him.

But still with him.

And he almost thought, _How dare she?_ How could she have the nerve to be so self-effacing, so loyal, when he was so horrible to her? Why couldn't she just laugh in his face, tell him how horrible he was, how pathetic, what a little nerd, sitting here crying like a pansy, running around trying to save the world with no clue of what he was doing, pushing away the only woman who had ever wanted him; why couldn't she just slap him, punch him, kick him in rage? It would hurt so much less.

Because he had evidently misplaced his manhood somewhere in the land of sensitive singer-songwriters who played guitar while feeding cats and offering foot massages to passersby, he felt the urge to let a fresh batch of liquid from his eyes; but he didn't want to, was sick of doing that, so he managed to rein it in this time, as he tried to reach out to her in her own misery...

"Alyx..."

_Let me explain, let me apologize, let me beg or negotiate or just throw myself on your shoes and you can make me work for this...let me comfort, let me fix, heal, say things we both know are empty but that you want to hear..._

"Are you going to get into the bed?"

She wasn't looking at him, running a hand through her hair as she turned her head to the side, business-like in a deadened tone, evidently worn out too, but still practical.

Alyx. The reason they'd survive.

And who he had to hurt, and keep hurting, to meet the same end.

He blinked at her, surprised at the offering. She still...? Obviously at this point she meant it in a strictly practical sense, with nothing implied, because what could there be anymore? Everything was laid out on the table, bare and brazen and ugly, and they were both clear on the terms they were on now, and would have to be for the foreseeable future.

His mind worked to catch up to what the words themselves meant, trying to change gears abruptly. He hesitated. Yes..? Right? Or no...? He wanted it, yes, even if it was just a slumber-party kind of arrangement, because it meant she wasn't rejecting him. But could it just be just that, just slumber-party time in the woods, or would he have too much trouble with it? He didn't mean in just a physical sense—because his manhood seemed to be phoning in from pansy-guitar-cat-loving-foot-massage-land to say hi—but it was intimate in other ways.

It made him nervous, to be perfectly honest. He hadn't ever slept in a bed with a woman platonically in his adult life. Both of them under the covers, in just pajamas, so close, liable to snore or flail their arms or cry out with nightmares in the unconsciousness of sleep...or other things...

She sighed in annoyance, pushed past him, went for the lantern, turned it out...briskly walked over to the bed, the floorboard creaking, threw back the covers, fluffed the pillow with vigor...got in, pulled the covers over her—pulled them tightly, turning her back in a decisive motion, her shoulder angled like a windbreak.

He had taken too long. He had hesitated, unable to make up his mind, not sure what he wanted, and she had taken it for reluctance, for more indecision about her...really, he just had had trouble understanding the words as they were entering his brain…and it was such a big decision…and pajamas and snoring and—

Gordon bolted out to the door of the cabin, unhatched it, went outside. Into the storm, where it was safer.


	3. Chapter 3

**_A/N-Hiiiiii! Well, if you haven't read my note on my Profile about why this has taken so long to be uploaded, please do. The TL;DR is that grad school sucks. I'm in a part of the school year where I have some free time right now, so I hope to upload at least another chapter by June 17th, when my last class starts up. Other updates in my life involve trying to date an MIT doctorate candidate in theoretical physics and finding out he was NOT, sadly,going to be my own personal Gordon Freeman; finding an actual boyfriend; living through a terrorist attack and then the imposition of martial law on the whole metro area, followed by a manhunt where we were all in lockdown-that was fun; and discovering that new Arrow show on the CW that is chock full of extremely good-looking men-don't worry, I'm not switching fandoms because I have all these policies against it...and no good ideas. Thankfully, in THIS fandom, I have been coming up with more story ideas but not having enough time to write them. So the raw material is there, if only I can refine it and type it up, then edit it and publish it. Ugh._**

**_Anyway, thank you all so much for so much positive feedback, including all the reviews! I had gotten used to getting fewer reviews on my work and was very very pleased with all the ones I'm getting on this one-you guys really do make me feel good about my writing, and I'm realizing that we fanfic writers really do live for reviews. I had a few people say the previous chapter was kind of overly dramatic; yes, I agree(and thank you all for being nice about it!:-)), and I tried to make it reasonable, but I just re-read it and lol...now I want to edit it again, but I feel like if this were "real" publishing and not the kind we do on the Internet that is somehow considered less legit, it would be kind of "cheating" to go back and do that...or else there'd just have to be a new anniversary edition somewhere along the road. Anywhodle, back on topic, I also didn't want Gordon crying all over the place, but I wasn't seeing a way around it, so I just had him do it sparingly and then feel bad about it and impose restrictive gender norms on himself-poor Gordon,you should take a crowbar to the oppressive patriarchy that deprives you of your right to show emotion. I was getting kind of annoyed with him-Gordon, stop being so emo!-but that was how he keeps turning out when I write him. It would annoy me if a guy I knew in real life were like this, so I don't know why I'm making Gordon this way. Welp. What are you gonna do?_**

**_Anyway, I'm rambling because it is 3:00am and not saying anything useful. Please read, enjoy, and if you feel like it, review-and if you do review, please let me know things I'm doing right AND things that can be improved, I love those reviews because they give me stuff to work on to make my writing better!:-)_**

**_Now go read. Go. Shoo._**

_Don't surrender your loneliness_

_So quickly._

_Let it cut more deep._

_Let it ferment and Season you_

_As few human_

_Or even divine ingredients can._

_Something missing in my heart tonight_

_Has made my eyes so soft,_

_My voice_

_So tender,_

_My need of God_

_Absolutely_

_Clear._

_-"Absolutely Clear", Shams al-Din Hafiz._

It was storming like something biblical. The water seemed not to be able to drop itself on them fast enough, and was moving in sheets, dumping down on them into huge puddles that were more the size of small lakes, and threatening to turn the little cabin into an island. They were all running downhill, though—thankfully, as Alyx had noted, they were on high ground after all—but the visibility was so poor Gordon couldn't see to where it was flowing; he couldn't even see ten feet into the storm. It was cold, whether from the wind blowing so hard that the gusts it produced sometimes were threatening his ability to stand, or whether it was from the cold front off the Caucasus or whatever the heck was going on—he didn't know. All he knew was it was storming fiercely, and it felt wild and dangerous and it was somehow what he needed.

There was a little overhang over the porch, and he was standing under it, sheltered from most of the storm and able to just watch it. But of course, in storms of this magnitude, there was always going to be those little droplets of water, if not the actual rain itself, getting blown in at you, making you almost as drenched as if you had gone out into the thick of it anyway. He was soon shivering, even though his HEV suit still covered him almost completely and gave him good insulation.

This was somehow perfect, this weather. Always, when you had those little melodramas where friends-not-lovers got into major fights or hooked up in secluded cabins somewhere, there would always be a rainstorm outside. He remembered vaguely, from high school literature classes, lectures about the outside weather mirroring a character's internal feelings or setting a mood, and how authors used rain as a metaphor for purification, and that that was why you saw it in so many of those strange French movies where people kissed on benches under the guy's coat in storms that followed droughts that had been going on for the whole length of the movie. He thought about this and finally understood it; he had always seen it as a dumb cliche in movies and so on, but now he just wanted to wade into it and be...purified, or whatever. Some kind of metaphor for baptism, maybe, who the heck knew, maybe it was just a metaphor for taking a shower, which he needed too, and he should grab some soap and Old Spice.

It really did feel good, though, as if the savage weather were cathartically burning off his emotions, and the wet wind lapping at him made him feel as bare and exposed on the outside as he did on the inside. The water splashing at him felt indeed purifying, as if he were being washed in cold, drizzly cleanliness, because a warm, constant stream of liquid wasn't appropriate to his mood...and anyway, he wanted the penitence of ice water. It went well with how monastically ascetic he'd been with himself up until now, and how frigid he had been to Alyx...and was going to keep having to be.

And so would she, now. She was going to be like ice to deal with; no yelling and bickering like she'd done with Mossman, no, he was sure that wasn't what this called for. She'd just be stony and silent and bitter, and her silence would be loud as a drum, and she wouldn't look at him, try to talk to him, no more winking or cute innuendos or come-ons, no more batted eyes or sly smiles for him. No, he was doomed to her resentment, probably for the rest of the time they knew each other. Maybe she wouldn't ever soften and heal, maybe she wouldn't want any more to do with him after this, and instead of grudgingly finding an uneasy platonic peace, she'd just pull away and never come back.

And he'd be pulled off to some other dimension or whatever to fulfill some other hero's mission. And maybe he'd be allowed back, or maybe not, but he'd always miss Alyx, the one who'd been his friend, and who he could have had for his own.

He meant to think all of this with a feeling of resignation, of acceptance of the bitter outcome he had earned, like a criminal who knows, after committing the crime, that his life is now forfeited to doing his time.

But he felt instead...panic. Desperation. He had had things in his life that he wanted, desperately craved, and worked for with all he could, denied him, and felt bitter disappointment...but acceptance. Why was this not the same?

Then again, this wasn't a job or a scholarship or an opportunity to present a poster at a conference. This was a person, a relationship. This was...more. So, so much more. It meant something to him that nothing else ever had, had ever come close to in semblance, and felt so right that he now felt like a person who had been deaf all their life and then granted hearing and discovered music...only to be threatened with losing it and going back to a silent world that would now seem starved of something meaningful.

He had to get her back. He had to somehow keep her, hold onto her, try to fix things. Gordon wasn't good at relationship stuff of any kind, any kind of relationship, but he knew from his own experience that if you had a fight with someone and it threatened your friendship, you wanted them to fight for it, let them know you wanted to keep it anyway, fix what you could, not just discard something that only needed mending.

But did this only need mending? That was the problem; was their relationship...friendship...whatever the heck it was...at all salvageable? Part of why he had so staunchly avoided having this conversation with her was that he'd feared the outcome. No way could he expect her to be okay with him now. Maybe he'd had a shot still, when she'd asked him into the bed, but now...

His train of thought paused, hesitated…rewound, re-examined...clicked. That had been the moment when he'd pushed her too far, refusing to get into the bed. Truly, though, he hadn't been refusing, he'd just been confused. Somehow his brain had gotten stuck because they had been discussing deep, serious, soul-searching things and then she'd suddenly asked him a practical question, one with a yes or no answer, and he hadn't been able to switch gears fast enough. It was like suddenly switching back and forth between French and Swahili.

But maybe he could...

That idea was loaded. She'd implicitly promised nothing would happen, but she was a woman, and he was a man, and did she understand how difficult it would be to be in that bed with her and not...be very male?

He wasn't some kind of monster or anything, and with any other woman he'd be confident in his ability to handle himself. But he didn't simply lust after Alyx, he wanted her in so many other ways; his attraction was on so many levels besides physical, ways that made him think he might belong in cat-worshipping-foot-massage-land after all. And it was difficult for him to hold back those responses too, but now he'd let loose the floodgates, and he was afraid the honesty he hadn't been able to hold back anymore in that little room would spill over into _more_ in that bed. It wasn't so much that he didn't trust himself as that he knew that if given half a chance, Alyx would take it...and then he would respond, and since she'd be willing and he was so very eager, things would progress and he'd be able to stop himself if she told him to…but he knew she wouldn't.

That was the problem. The attraction was too strong, so very hard to withhold on both their parts, that if they gave themselves any slight hope of _anything_, each would take it and feed it off of each other until he would no longer hold any chance of holding himself back after tonight, and he'd put her in danger in several different ways. He knew himself well enough to know that he was not one of those men who could sleep with a woman without it meaning something—it had never worked in the past—and he wouldn't be able to go back to feigning platonic feelings for her if that happened.

And that would drag her into a whole net of misery like the one he was in, or at the very least break her heart somewhere down the road, and it would all be on his shoulders. He wasn't afraid of the possibility of sex—oh, he most certainly was not—he was afraid of how that would change things, how it would either give them something they'd both revel in and then have taken from them, or would give the G-Man Alyx's freedom on a platter, and they'd be a sick, sad, captive little Barbie and Ken boxed set.

Not letting anything happen would be difficult. Very difficult.

_Difficult but not impossible_, a little voice somewhere in his head said. _You thought it would be too hard to let her know you're not as oblivious to her as she thought you were, right? And it was difficult, but you did it. Maybe you can do this too. It's even harder, yes, but you've shown you can handle this much so far._

Really? He argued with the little, random voice. Look how well that turned out! She's lying in that bed alone, hating me, and I'm out in a rainstorm trying to figure out if I can save what's left of...

...of what she means to me. No, that wasn't right. Of what he meant to her.

_Uh-huh_, his internal dialog continued, _you've gone halfway with this, now you need to follow through. If you don't finish the job, if you abandon ship halfway through, you'll have a bridge that goes halfway and then falls into the water. Finish the bridge, Gordon._

By doing...what, exactly? I can't go in there and make hot, passionate love to her or anything...couldn't even if this were a normal situation and I didn't have the world wanting me to clean up it's mess and a creepy psycho in a suit popping in and out of my consciousness, quite frankly. Hot, passionate sex has never exactly been my forte. And if we even started along that road, we wouldn't be able to stop. Doesn't matter how bad it would be, it can't happen at all.

_And she said she was fine with that, right?_

...so...I should just go in and get in the bed and...do what?

_That's it. That's all._

That's...that's all? What are you talking about?!

_She doesn't need you to do anything, she just needs to know you want to._

...Look, if I get in that bed with her...I really want that, honestly. If she's not furious enough at me that she'd let me, I would totally go in there and get it on, as unromantic and anti-climactic as it would be. And if I have to be next to her without getting our clumsy nerd-sex on...that's going to be extremely hard for me. The restraint...no matter what happens, we have to go back to normal tomorrow, we have to go back to what we were this afternoon. If I have sex with her, if I even kiss her...heck, I can't even tell her what she wants to hear in plain English and not have it change things between us drastically. I'm not the stoic paragon of masculinity who can put his feelings aside completely like people need me to. I know that. I know my own limits.

_Then don't let it get that far. Just get in the bed and don't touch her. You stay on one side and she can stay on the other. She just needs the gesture._

...I don't know if I can do that.

_You already did something you thought you couldn't handle tonight, right? You let those walls down, you were honest and upfront with her about how much you want to be with her, you told her what you could about why, and now if you don't finish the job, the bridge isn't going to reach across the river. Don't let the bridge fall._

But if _she_…

_What, you don't trust her? You don't trust __Alyx__, the person you've let mean so much to you even after you'd stopped letting anyone mean anything? Who you know always has your back in a firefight or __anything__ else, absolutely __anything__, who has never let you down, who always looks out for you, and who you even were able to trust—until you pushed her way too far and asked way too much—not to cross the lines __you_ _laid down about talking about the two of you? You don't trust __Alyx__, the person whom you've never trusted anyone more deeply or profoundly than in your life?_

_You horrible, dirty, rotten liar. You never understood the idea of having a second half until you met her. How dare you do her that disservice?_

Gordon realized his interior voice was right...so right, and he'd been so stupid not to see it all this way. Burning, crushing shame welled up in him, deep disgust at himself for thinking the one person he'd trust to wade into hell and pull him out at her own risk might impose her wants over his, when she'd been far too generous with him for so long.

And how presumptuous was he, really, to think that she'd even want to bang him—even want to let him into the bed, never mind lay a finger on her—after how he'd treated her? He'd be lucky if she didn't knife him or...something. Who said she wanted him anywhere near her after the argument they'd just had?

_One of the things you love about her, Gordon,_ his head-voice reminded him_, is her ability to always keep going, to heal, to see the humanity in a situation. Throw herself at your mercy, get on your knees and cry if you have to, do whatever it takes, without protecting yourself or holding anything back...and trust her capacity to heal. She doesn't see being vulnerable as a weakness like you do, she sees it as a strength. And she needs you to admit you were wrong, and that you aren't some stoic rock of—what did she call you...hah...of self-abnegation. Prove it to her. Be what she needs you to be._

"Be what she needs you to be"...that phrase echoed around in Gordon's head. He wanted so badly to be whatever she wanted him to, had always wanted any chance for it he could get. He could do it now, in a more meaningful way than plunging into a radioactive reactor core could. And maybe, just maybe, she'd take it as a promise that he really did want to do anything for her that she wanted, and not just selfishly deny them both.

...But the real test is going to come in the morning, when I have to put the walls back up. If I can't...then I can't do my job and I'll drag her into this psychopathy that is my life with the G-Man in it.

_If you don't finish the bridge, she won't even talk to you again._

...Maybe that's what's best for her.

_Wow, you're an idiot._

The part of him that was arguing the case for getting into the bed was watching the other side of him squirm with agony at the very idea of saying goodbye to Alyx. He knew he wasn't that selfless. And the pro-bed voice had decided now was a good time to replay a snippet of the conversation from inside to him: "You're not just denying yourself something, Gordon, you're denying me!"

That sentence circled around in his head a little. Alyx's hurt, angry expression...the tears dribbling out of her eyes that she wasn't afraid to let flow, because she was so much braver than him..."I'm not the one who's repressed here," she'd said, "I'm not the one who's not letting myself feel anything! I'm not the one cutting myself off from people!"

Just lying in the bed, that's all...that's all I need to do, you're saying?

_Yup. Pretty much. You're gonna have to have some major restraint to not let anything happen that you can't undo—and remember why you can't, because that's the only way you're going to be able to not start rounding the bases with her—but you can do this._

What if I fall asleep and—

_Don't even think that way. Keep your focus, stay on your side of the bed, and don't let anything happen. No matter how much you want it to. Or how much she does._

Oh God. That was another problem. How would he lay down the boundaries with Alyx?

_That's always hard, Freeman_, he told himself. _When you have sex with someone, you lay down your boundaries so neither of you crosses them and things go well. When you're trying very very hard not to have sex...well, apparently you do the same. Be brave. Be restrained. Find the right balance between stoicism and affect. You've gotta just...show her you can just sleep in a bed with her and not do anything, because that'll show you can just be friends after this. Do this tonight and it'll let her know you can put the facade back on tomorrow and go back to what you were and make it all work. That nothing's broken, that whatever you have can be fixed. That's the message, if you get in that bed. It's like...a metaphor, or something. So…be brave. Bridges, not walls._

Bridges, not walls.

Fine.

He sighed enormously. It felt good, his lungs needing the exercise. He had been unaware of his surroundings for the past few minutes, immersed as he was in his thoughts, and now the howling wind came back to him, the splattering water, the noise of the puddles splashing...

He allowed himself to enjoy it, to feel it a little, for a moment. Rain as purification...he stepped forward a step, into the wind that was blowing rain more forcefully than where he'd been standing on the porch in a more protected place. He wasn't standing full-on in the rain, but he allowed the blown droplets left by it to pelt him, making him feel cold and wet, that exposed and raw feeling coming back. He tried to let it soothe him, cleanse him emotionally. The feeling of tired, spent catharsis that comes after tears was in him, and now the rain pelted him, his mind still naked and making his body feel so too, even through this thick, bulky suit.

The suit...he couldn't sleep in the HEV suit, of course, no way, even if he wanted the extra bulk between him and Alyx. The suit tended to dull or at least hide any...male reactions he might have, and with it on, he wouldn't be able to feel her body's warmth on the sheets so well, no press of soft skin against him, or nothing but two thin layers of fabric, their clothes, separating him from her...

Oh boy. This was going to be fun. Restraint, Gordon. Restraint.

He guffawed mirthlessly in his head. He was in for a _difficult_ night.


End file.
